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Are Vaccinated children healthier or unhealthier? Who knows?!

Recently I have been scouring the net trying to find robust, well-designed, large-population studies examining whether the health of vaccinated children is overall better or worse than their unvaccinated peers. Guess what. There isn’t a single one in existence.

If I was a Government, crippled by ongoing costs of a growing population of patients with expensive chronic health conditions, I might be putting my hand in pocket and funding a massive and relatively cheap study of very simple design:

Question: Are vaccinated children healthier or unhealthier in long-term health measures?

It would be so easily done. 2 groups, one vaccinated, one unvaccinated, huge numbers in each group (10,000 or more), and record incidence of all common chronic health disorders by say, the age of 10. Measure everything – amount of other medication, health of mother, other toxic exposures, and DO THE STATS. It really wouldn’t be hard.

The argument that doing studies with unvaccinated groups is ‘unethical’ has gone on for far too long. It is the most hilariously unscientific argument I can imagine. Apparently, the rest of the time, science must stand up to ‘rigourous’ testing, RCTs, prospective studies, informed consent…. but in the case of mass vaccination, for some reason, the powers that be are allowed to throw all of that out of the window and just crack on.

Recently Martin Blaser has published preliminary findings that antibiotics might not be the magic pills we once thought they were. Bizarrely, he seems to want to isolate antibiotics as the only possible causal variable in problems like obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma and autism. Surely it wouldn’t take an enormous leap of imagination to question whether dozens of shots of aluminium, formaldehyde, animal DNA, viruses might have some negative repercussions on long-term health measures. Surely it’s worth investigating… if only to satisfy my idle curiosity!

I feel sure there are plenty of parents of unvaccinated children that would be more than happy to take part in a comparative questionnaire-based study. If it were my study, the vaccinated group would only comprise children who had had the entire schedule of vaccines, and the unvaccinated group would only contain children who had had none, with exclusion of children with pre-existing health conditions. No. of rounds of antibiotics I think will also be one of the most important variables, and should be separately analysed.

When I started to properly read the much-sited German Study I had to do a double take, to see if I’d misread… in their sample of 13453 subjects, only 0.7% of the participants were unvaccinated. 0.7%! This is the moment when any self-respecting ‘scientist’ should crumple up the study and throw it in the bin. To put it in real terms, this means they have compared a sample of 13359 vaccinated children, with 94 unvaccinated children, and then started to draw conclusions. The weakness of this in terms of methodology is so blatant as to not even be worth pointing out. They then go on to make all sorts of claims about the rate of things like whooping cough being much higher in the unvaccinated group. I am slightly baffled as to how this was ever published. Even if whooping cough incidence is greater in the unvaccinated group, what I’m more interested in is the other health complaints that have replaced a mild case of whooping cough…. I think I’d take my chances with a cough rather than a life-long chronic health condition. So far, any studies that have been attempted are methodologically poor, and are, in my view, measuring all the wrong markers.

During my search for good studies, I came across Dr Suzanne Humphries, who is in the process of doing a study that may ignite the debate in a helpful way. I await the results with interest! I listened to her radio interview and was so encouraged to think that someone is indeed producing a piece of respected research looking at this point. She will use large numbers, look at all kinds of other variables, and will hopefully start to answer some of the long-awaited questions:

1. What is the incidence of autism, asthma, epilepsy, diabetes, ADHD, childhood depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, eating disorders, PANDAS, colitis, other health issues in the 2 groups? Is there a significant difference?

2. What further impact do antibiotics, steroids and other medications have? Is there a difference in health between those children who haven’t been exposed to such drugs, and those who have?

3. Are toxic exposures pre-birth recorded and accounted for (e.g IVF hormones, anti-sickness, other medications taken by the mother during pregnancy/breastfeeding)

4. Why is autism more prevalent in the US than, for example the UK? Could it be linked to a more aggressive vaccination schedule? Is it worth doing a cross-cultural look at incidence, and number of vaccine shots before a certain age?

It breaks my heart when I see the amount of money put aside for ‘genetic research’ into autism. Last time I checked, genes don’t alter in the course of 100 years. If even a fraction of that was used to fund research examining the obvious first-step questions listed above, we might find the need for genetic research melts away altogether. Surely that should have the Chancellor of the Exchequer rubbing his hands with glee. Especially if he starts adding in the budget required to care for the millions of chronically ill. The BBC reported on Monday that the cost of autism in the UK is £32 Billion a year. Question is – is this off-set by profits made from drug companies? According to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), the UK came 9th in a list of the top global pharmaceutical markets, being worth $21,635 million in 2012. So, the answer is, in short, no, it doesn’t even come close to compensating the cost of autism alone. And this is only one diagnosis that may well be linked to vaccination damage. Think of the mind-boggling figures when you start to add in all the others… epilepsy, diabetes, asthma, food allergies, ADHD, colitis…. if there was a chance of reducing incidence of all of these we could probably reduce the deficit by a considerable amount within 10 years!

Okay, I know I’ve been a little ranty today, but once I started to examine the paltry evidence on offer, I became incensed. Maybe I might start my own study here in the UK…with the power of the world wide web, the sky’s the limit!

To keep up to date with relevant news and articles I come across relating to the treatment of autism, please join the Facebook group Effective Autism Treatment, which I administrate along with Alan Freestone, a colleague based in Northern Ireland, who also specialises in the treatment of Autism and related disorders.

About Anna Rayner

Anna Rayner is a homeopath specialising in the treatment of Autistic Spectrum Disorders. She works via Skype, and also in Earlsfield, South West London. She offers a free 15 minute Skype consultation to prospective clients.